All played at McCoy Stadium. Perhaps Rocco Baldelli attended a PawSox game or two in his youth, I don't know. Or Dan Wheeler, I guess.

Eric HinskeCarlos PenaChad BradfordCliff Floyd

All played for the Boston Red Sox. Cliff Floyd hated it here and Boston fans hated him back, but I didn't know better and I thought he was so cool...

On April 19th, 2007, I stated that Matt Garza was a superstar and that he was awesome. Normally I'd point out how prescient I was, but I tend to say that about a lot of people. I do know that he was exciting to watch in those days.

By the way, Almost Everybody: Terry Francona did not lose this series. How thick-skulled can you get?

It's going to be a really great WS. Happy Halloween and such.

OH! We signed Dewon Day! Remember how I called him Dewon 'Fine' Day? I'm sure I'm not the first person to call him that, but guess what?

These formulas yields a null value if the pitch is on the other side of the strike zone, and give you a positive number if the pitch was a strike and a negative number if it was a ball, according to the rulebook rather than any de facto average strike zone. The formula after the MAX or MIN calculates the additional horizontal movement while the pitch passes over the strike zone, based on the horizontal velocity and acceleration parameters (the part that looks like a quadratic equation is figuring out the average velocity and hence time to home plate; it turns out that this is only infinitesimally more accurate than using the average of [start_speed] and [end_speed]).

Low Strike Location:

=([pz]-[sz_bot])*12-1.5

According to the rules, the - 1.5 should be +1.5. Saying -1.5 is saying that the umps in practice require all of the ball rather than any part of the ball to be above the bottom of the kneecaps. After looking at the data, it seems just as likely that they're requiring any part of the ball to above the top of the kneecaps; if you went with that, you would use -2 instead of -1.5. There is no need for an extra clause because the pitch always drops further as it passes over the plate.

10.08.2008

In the 2007 off-season, Chris Carter played winter ball in Venezuela for Los Tiburones de La Guaira. You can read about his experiences there, if you're so inclined.

Carter lost about 30 lbs down there, thanks to a parasite. Those pesky parasites!

Side note: Many people think Chris Carter is a great guy. This is because he's warm and friendly and acts like he's your pal. DO NOT BELIEVE THIS. He's like one of the biggest phonies you'll ever meet. I think I'll leave it at that.